The Grumpy Paladin » Game Design and Production

A Company that has Learned Nothing

Tal — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:14:44 +0000

I had just written last post about the myopia of the development team of Square-Enix.

Final Fantasy 14 launches Sept. 30 on PC, March 2011 on PS3

And here we go again; a staggered launch.

The counterargument, I imagine, is something having to do about this being the best business decision. I question if that’s actually so. How many potential customers (and thus subscription fees) do they lose because, once again, one type of player will gain an advantage over another. The problem Square-Enix has to deal with this time, is that they’re dealing with a potential player base that has dealt with their game before, and it becomes more and more pervasive that it’s same shit, different pile.

Who wants to play with a staggered launch, again?

In addition, you’re looking at, once again, dealing with a console that’s going to be four years old by the time this game is released. What’s the long term game plan here when this game is three years old? Four years old? Are we going to be blaming PS3 limitations?

New level caps, why RDM tanking died, and stuff.

Tal — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 07:48:17 +0000

It’s really late in the game’s lifespan to be doing this. Like, way too late.

Yeah, everyone knew this was coming. They announced it a few months ago, and everyone could have gotten sufficiently prepared. As far as I can tell though, very few people put in the amount of dedication and effort into doing so. The game has been designed at the hard level cap being 75 for almost half a decade. This was short-sighted design, of course, since it meant that when the end of Rise of the Zilart came around, they were already implementing The Best Gear in The Game — Adaman Hauberks and Ridills and Relic Trinkets and shit.

One complaint I hear from World of Warcraft players is how irrelevant (and how fast) old gear becomes; new expansions meant better gear, which means more shit to get. Old content obsolesces fast in favor of new and different content. This had not existed in FFXI, which was drawing different complaints. Instead of obsolesced gear, gear progression was horizontal, and why everyone hates Dragon’s Aery.

This is how the endgame playerbase operated — investing in things when you’re 75 because that’s how far you’re able to go. You upgrade relics, salvage bodies, and stuff because that’s what’s you do at endgame.

It’s just that now, the endgame point has moved. Very pointlessly.

RDMs everywhere are crying because their spells have been hit in terms of enmity, and they can no longer serve as the “Most Efficient Tank”. My inherent assholeish nature propels me to give all those RDMs bitching about it the middle finger and to tell them to kiss my ass.

But then I read Kaeko’s post about the death of RDM tanking, and it got me thinking. Specifically:

“I think a lot of RDMs want to QQ over this and I can sympathize since I’ve found RDM tanking to be quite fun over the past few months, but I look at it in a different way. This is a game within a game. The creators (SE) have their own ideas on how the game “should” be played; we as players are the innovators and we sometimes popularize things they never intended to see happen (RDM tanking certainly being one of them).”

Square-Enix has always had a ridiculous amount of contempt for their players. Perhaps contempt isn’t the right word, but they do enjoy being antagonistic to their players. I understand that, as a game developer, you take a certain amount of egotistical pride in your creation. There’s nothing like pimply-faced geeks yelling at you about what they want and when they want it. It’s your game, after all, and you’ll design it however the hell you want.

That’s why RDM tanking died, because it’s not your game. You can’t do whatever you want in their game. Tabletop players will recognize this as a characteristic of a bad GM, that the GM doesn’t like their players going out of the confines of what they’ve established their players doing.

It’s pretty obvious that, at every turn, Square-Enix underestimated their player base, and it’s one of the things that they continue to do wrong and refuse to learn from. They were shocked how fast their playerbase leveled to 50, so they almost viciously ramped up the EXP requirements to 75. Yet, the playerbase did that, and over time leveled more than one job as well. Level more than one job to 75? That’s preposterous! You’re only supposed to have one job at 75!

To put it another way, the requirements from 75 to 80 alone is about 200,000 EXP, or one-fourth of leveling a whole new job from level 1. Plus the proposed cap now is going to be 99 over time, so you’re looking at leveling to 85, to 90, to 95, and then to 99. Even if we assume in the best possible world that each of those gaps is worth 200,000 exp, you’re looking at 1,000,000 worth of EXP, or practically leveling another job from 75 to 99. I have four jobs at 75, so I’d need four million exp if I wanted all of them to 99. I don’t even have four million EXP on all four of my jobs now.

This is something that, if Square-Enix was genuinely ever interested in doing as opposed to a last-ditch effort to try and reclaim their game, then it’s something they should have done a long time ago. I, personally, don’t have the time, energy, focus, or dedication to give a shit, and from what I can tell, I’m not all that alone on this. I’m not even one of those ridiculous players with relics out the ass who have to shove them through pointless and ridiculous Magian quests to try and shoehorn them into not being obsolete. I’m a shithead with only a salvage body upgraded, which, as it seems right now, is going to be obsolesced anyway.

I’ve Become One of THOSE People…

Tal — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:54:07 +0000

There’s a very poignant scene at the end of the movie Casino where Robert DeNiro’s character, Sam “Ace” Rothstein, reflects on the hubris that eventually brings down the Tangiers casino, a big portion of Cosa Nostra, and the eventual eradication of mafia influence over Las Vegas. The implication is that once the mafia was thrown out of Vegas, corporations filled in the power vacuum and completely decimated the once sinful mecca. Rothstein speaks with utter disdain and regret of this change, stating that the city was never going to be how it once was and will never be the same way again. The implication is that the way the mafia ran the casinos made going to the middle of the desert worth the while, and that the corporations don’t really give a shit about the experience the way the mafia did.

That feeling is pretty much how I feel about Astral Burning.

My First Job has always been Paladin. Nonetheless, I took a certain amount of egotistical pride when I leveled Warrior. You can probably look back at some of chronicles in this blog about doing so. I had hated leveling the job to 30 as a subjob for PLD, and I hated it even more when I leveled it to 37. So when I was told that PLDs don’t get invited to merit parties, I was furious. What did they expect me to do, level another job? Even more harrowing was the suggestion that I should level WAR to 75 because of the gear overlap with PLD. Warrior? Are you fucking kidding me? Nobody takes that job to 75! It’s a subjob-only job!

As I leveled it, though, I fell in love with the job. I loved dual-wielding, and I loved Rampage (THE weaponskill of choice for axe users). I loved calculating how long my attack round was between how much dual-wield trait I had and the amount of haste I would get. I loved leveling it with my friend, who was leveling corsair at the time, and having amazing 15k/hr exp parties, which were unheard of at the time. It was truly great.

Nothing lasts forever, though, and my love of dual-wielding was replaced with a need for using a great axe, ruined by a bunch of crybaby Dark Knights and Samurai who felt that they didn’t do enough damage. Suddenly, my swift dual-wielding and Rampage spamming was replaced with a dulled need to try and manage a six-hit build. Even then, I took pride in trying to understand game mechanics, figuring out what was the best combination of Store TP, Double Attack, and Haste.

These days, shit like that doesn’t even matter. There is no need to take pride in any job you level, or even care about how something might affect something else. Now you just sit in Korroloka Tunnel, gather all the mobs, sync to level 15, and let the Astral Flow fly. People are winning Earthen Abjuration: Body abjurations without even having any of the necessary weapons skilled up, just because they Astral Burned their job to 75. In fact, many of them are now better warriors than I because they have leftover gear from other jobs they can use on WAR; gear that I don’t have. Then, once you get bored of the job, then you just level up another job and reloot all kinds of new shinies. And why wouldn’t you? EXPing has never been easier. 40,000EXP for 45 minutes of work. You can’t beat that rate.

Granted, part of the problem is how utterly formulaic and predictable the game has become. Nonetheless, that might just be a testament to how archaic the game is in 2010. I doubt a level increase to 80, and eventually 99, will alter the predictability of the game.

Nonetheless, the real cause is the playerbase itself. The desire for the adventure will always lose out to the desire to Get Shit. These days, it’s never been easier to Get Shit, and quality of the player matters even less.

Chocobo Racing & the Swamptrot are Bullshit

Tal — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:14:49 +0000

This is my bird, Kikuichimonji:

He is my pride and joy. I bred and raised him for racing. His stats are:

Strength: SS
Endurance: SS
Discernment: B
Receptivity: F
Abilities: Gallop and Canter

He is, through and through, a racing bird. When equipped with a Speed Apple, he wins most races… Except for C1 races and the Passhow Swamptrot. It’s not like he’s placing Second or Third in a C1 race. He goes from placing first in a C2 to not placing. That means I’m out 10,000 gil on top of 74 chocobucks. There’s very little I can do besides change his item, and anything that’s not a Speed Apple isn’t worth using at all. If I had not maxed out his Strength or Endurance, then I could equip a different saddle on him to improve his stats, but because I maxed out his racing stats (since, y’know, he’s a fucking racing bird) there’s really nothing I can do about it.

And don’t get me fucking started on the Swamptrot… Hey look, the sheep and the rabbit each use Sheep Charge and Wild Carrot three times. That’s totally cool and fair.

Just another example of, “Hey, look, I did everything right. Oh well, too bad for me!”

Time Management, Gil, and Ares Body Progress

Tal — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:21:08 +0000

First of all, I’d like to thank the dipshit who has decided to take this time, with the influx of khroma ore after Bonanza, to skill-up his smithing skill to 100 and keeping the price of said ore at 500k, rather than try and let the market crash for a little while so everybody benefits. You are a very valuable member of this game, and I hope that your myopia and impatience (while not unexpected) continue to serve you well.

Anyway. If there is a time in which how awful I am at the endgame has shown itself, it has been upgrading this Ares Body. I got the pieces back in October/Novemberish. I didn’t seriously start trying to upgrade this body until January. It’s now February. I have four ingots, with materials for two more ready to be made. Obtaining gil has always been difficult. My strategy before (and had worked well) was to play the market, namely buy things low, and sell things high. This is how I was able to fund assorted PLD pieces and most of my WAR gear.

However, age has taken its toll on this game. Through repeated bouts of inflation and stagnation, all the gil in this game has been more or less consolidated into two groups: HNMLSes and RMTs (at least on Hades). Through my own myopia, I burned most of the HNMLS bridges a few years back since I didn’t want to be a part of that corrupt, insidious nonsense of ePenis waving and faux elitist bullshit. I hadn’t expected for them to simply just start fucking selling everything that dropped, but I guess everyone wants a fucking relic weapon. And RMT is, well, RMT. It just cheapens the victory. Plus I’m poor and can’t afford to throw that kind of money around.

So I joined a sky merc linkshell. Again. Because I never fucking learn ever. After about two weeks of piss-poor payouts and remembering how much I hate sky, that didn’t last. Spending twelve hours a week to MAYBE get a million gil wasn’t even close to worth it. I could spend those twelve hours mining Zhayolm. Getting two khroma ore in those twelve hours would actually meet the best expectations in mercing a sky linkshell.

Oh, and thanks to the other linkshells selling Haidate for 3.5m, forcing us to meet that price to stay competitive. You’re cool people.